Built to last: The Dokdo territorial controversy. The baseline conditions in domestic politics and international security of Japan and South Korea

Introduction

In his first State of the Union address on 27 January 2010, the US President Barack Obama joked that the bank bailout was “about as popular as root canal” (White House, 2010). The bank bailout program, which started with US$400b and would cost the US economy as much as US$4t, has become the symbol of public despair and frustration over the prospect that the economic situation has become utterly hopeless. For Japan and South Korea, the dispute over the sovereignty of the islands of Dokdo (known as Takeshima in Japan) has been as irritating and unpopular as root canal to both governments and to the people of Japan and South Korea, many of whom have been working together to achieve historical reconciliation.

Dokdo is located approximately 210 km from the east coast of Korea and 65 km from the southwest coast of Japan in the Sea of Japan (known as the East Sea in Korea). It is made up of two islets (Koreans call them Dongdo and Seodo) and other tiny rocks. Its entire size is 187,453 m² (approximately 46.32 acres). Its physical attributes are so negligible, and its strategic and economic value so little, that it may be difficult for many observers of East Asia outside the region to comprehend why the two countries are so obsessed with this dispute.

Today, the Dokdo controversy, like most other historical issues between Japan and South Korea, remains extremely volatile, and its prospect for an eventual resolution remains highly remote. It took 20 years, with the end of the Pacific War in 1945 and the signing of the normalization treaty in 1965, for both disputant countries to agree on the formula of a “thin” reconciliation, which allowed the two countries to deliberately shelve the dispute. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War in 1991, the current status of the Dokdo dispute continues to be defined by the 1965 formula: Japan continuing its protest that South Korea has unlawfully occupied the islands, and South Korea responding that there is no dispute to be settled with Japan regarding the sovereign status of the islands. Both governments have decided to creatively sidestep the issue of sovereignty for the sake of effectively managing fishery issues in the area adjacent to the territory.

Obsession with the sovereign possession of Dokdo does not result so much from the calculation of objective material benefits or from the desire for vindication. Some conservative Koreans, in their explanation of Japan’s preoccupation with the territory, have stressed the strategic value of the islands. Their main evidence is the fact that during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), the Japanese navy built an observatory platform on the islands. There is no concrete evidence, however, that the platform on Dokdo contributed to Japan’s wartime victory. In addition, it is a dubious proposition to claim that Dokdo would provide a similar military advantage in modern warfare.

Others have argued that the sole possession of the territory will bring immense economic benefits. However, recent scientific research on the geological characteristics of the Dokdo area by Lee (2009) proves that there are no seismic indicators to show the potential existence of energy resources such as natural gas. While Lee also points out that Korea’s large-scale gas-hydrate explorations have made some successful discoveries of natural gas-hydrate samples in the area, the location is about 70–80 km southwest of Dokdo, and thus, it is inaccurate to designate the area of explorations as a part of Dokdo; it should be identified as a part of the Ulleung Basin, over which Korea has complete sovereignty and administrative control.

As for fisheries, the 1998 bilateral fishery accord, which revised the original 1965 accord, established two types of fishing zones in the Dokdo area, the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ). In each country’s EEZ, fishing boats of the other nationality are guaranteed free fishing activity up to the agreed annual quota. In the PMZ, each country’s fishing boats can operate freely according to the flag-state principle. Article 15 of the 1998 fishery accord between Japan and South Korea explicitly stipulates that the territorial status and the boundaries of Dokdo are completely separate issues from the fishery accord.

Rather than examining the strategic and economic benefits that the possession of Dokdo would bring, it is the desire to redeem their respective past in the collective memory of the Japanese and South Koreans that has made the Dokdo issue so critical. For Japan, winning the international recognition that the islands unquestionably belong to Japan will be one of the key steps in rectifying the misdeeds and injustices committed to Japan during the process of relinquishing the territories “which she has taken by violence and greed,” as stated in the December 1943 Cairo Declaration. The Japanese believe that Dokdo should not have been part of the territories from which Japan was expelled. For South Korea, Dokdo is the reminder of its 36-year-long suffering under the Japanese occupation. Koreans consider any contest about its sovereign control over the islands to be tantamount to denying their historical memory as victims of Japanese imperialism. They believe that Japan’s persistent claims to Dokdo are unmistakable evidence that the former colonizers do not repent their past sins and have every intention of reviving their violent ways.

If a peaceful and permanent resolution of the Dokdo issue between Japan and South Korea ever happens, it will be an unqualified triumph of historical reconciliation. It is the main argument of this article that the Dokdo issue will not be resolved in the near future. Considering the roles of international institutions, the security environment of East Asia, and the domestic political agendas that restrain state elites in both countries from collaborating in order to make groundbreaking policy changes, the issue will remain as a festering status quo. The following section will examine the reasons why the 1965 system will continue to exist as a state of normalcy and will demand effective collaborative management by both governments rather than becoming a subject of resolution.

Shadow of the past, state elites, and new territorial policy

What are the conditions under which a state is inclined to reconcile its past relations with other countries? When does a country opt for an assertive attitude and recalcitrant policy with regard to a historical issue? When does it choose to adopt a conciliatory and long-term solution?

The answers to these questions are based on three considerations: the degree of the burdensome past, the autonomy of state elites, and the emergence of new conditions that favor reconciliatory policies. The first condition focuses on the origin of the issue. What are the background conditions in which the controversy was born and took shape? What are the premises and principles of the pending issue? The legacies of some historical disputes may portray easier resolutions than others. This is because some historical issues are not central to forming a historical narrative of national identity. Remembering them is a sobering but not an integral practice; interpreting basic facts is contentious and divergent but essentially agreeable and progressive. However, in many cases of historical disputes, the issues are so critical to national identity and sovereignty principle that an easy resolution rarely takes place.

The second condition considers the agency of political leaders. Every foreign policy, including any policy that is tied to historical and territorial issues, has an instrumental value for state elites seeking to bolster their legitimacy at home. Foreign policy, usually made in the name of promoting national interests, generates an “audience cost” (Fearon, 1994). Domestic constituents’ approval becomes an indispensable ingredient if political leaders are to successfully retain their incumbency. Keenly aware of this reciprocal relationship between foreign policy performance and domestic approval, state elites conduct their foreign policy in response to both domestic and international opportunities and constraints.

A question remains as to whether state elites are as strongly bound to public approval as is assumed by the argument of audience cost. Some assert that foreign policy and public opinion have little causal association (Yankelovich, 2005), while others argue for the critical-mass theorem, by which the majority opinion affects the government’s behavior in regard to foreign policy (Midford, 2006). However, memory problems (Kim and Schwartz, 2010) are compared to other kinds of foreign policy issues, usually the most volatile issues. They become favored weapons for political rivals in contentious politics to conveniently measure the leaders’ character. In this regard, the territorial and historical policymaking behavior of state elites is closely subjected to the audience-cost argument that the public judges the performance of the regime and determines its support based on an assessment of the regime’s success in delivering these “goods” through various foreign policies.

The model of strategy that utilizes legitimization explains the variations in state elites’ territorial policy in the following two ways: first, trade-offs between national and material goals are possible and second, the power positions of state elites in domestic and international politics determine their strategic choices. The possible trade-offs between national and material goals modulate state elites’ employment of a consistently assertive territorial policy. While the choice of territorial policy critically hinges on state elites’ need for legitimacy and support for their tenure—considerations that incline them toward assertive, nationalist policies—these reasons, at the same time, make it difficult to stretch the nationalist claims beyond domestic and international security and economic development.

Nationalism is both a constraint and an instrument for state elites. Escalating tension in international relations is likely to compel states to allocate additional resources to mitigate a hostile security environment, which affects the flow of information, technology, foreign investment, and trade. Overplaying the territorial integrity can foster nationalist fervor at home, as illustrated in a series of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China over the sovereign status of the Senkaku Islands in the 1990s and again in 2010. It is important to note that a territorial issue is not an inherent outgrowth of nationalist pressure. The fact that state elites have considerable autonomy in minimizing or magnifying the territorial issues for their own political benefits is a key to understanding the complexity of a territorial dispute.

The third and last condition that enables a country to make compromises in historical disputes is the emergence of a situation that makes reconciliation an absolute requirement for the country’s self-preservation. In other words, a state needs to depart from the state of “thin” reconciliation (Crocker, 2009), in which mutual hostility or passive peace is the governing norm. The state’s cost–benefit calculation of whether resorting to violence as a means to settle a dispute becomes unthinkable for a nation whose own identity is premised on the acceptance of a common destiny with other countries.

Theories of international relations and the Dokdo issue

With the end of the Cold War, optimists have suggested that the Dokdo issue is now on a new course and that the prospects for the issue to be resolved peacefully and permanently are brighter. Hara (2007) argues that it was the strategic decisions by the United States that deliberately left the Dokdo issue ambiguous in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The Treaty did not specify whether Dokdo was Korean territory and to whom Tokyo abrogated its right to the islands. Part of the reason for this ambiguity was to prevent the islands from falling into the hands of the communist bloc during the early stage of the Korean War (1950–1953), in which the entire Korean Peninsula was on the brink of being occupied by North Korea. It has been more than 60 years since the 1952 ratification of the San Francisco Peace Treaty that settled Japan’s territorial boundaries as the defeated country in the Pacific War and the signing of a truce to suspend the Korean War. Considering that it was more than 20 years ago that the Berlin Wall fell, an event that heralded the end of the Cold War, it seems that Japan and South Korea have had sufficient time to settle the Dokdo dispute.

Japan and South Korea have also established far more common interests since the enactment of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The experience of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998 supplied intellectual credence and political momentum to the search for regional solutions for regional problems. Sports and popular culture became visible and vibrant means of enhancing the spirit of friendship and mutual understanding. After the 2002 World Cup, jointly hosted by Japan and South Korea, the Japanese and Koreans held unprecedented favorable perceptions of each other. The rise of hallyu (“Korean wave,” i.e. the increased popularity of South Korean popular cultural products) and importation of Japanese pop culture into Korea promoted the spirit of mutual understanding and friendship. In addition, South Korea and Japan have become major trading partners. The growing bilateral trade now makes the possibility of a free-trade agreement a matter of serious consideration. Both countries have also elevated the levels of cooperation in security measures. Japan and South Korea are two important participants in the Six-Party Talks dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue. Both countries have become indispensable partners to each other in the realm of security, economics, and culture.

Additionally, international institutions have featured prominently in maritime disputes. Such institutions and universal laws have facilitated reliable communication and information sharing, while controlling violations and, thus, lowering the transaction costs of egoistic states in the international community (Goldstein et al., 2001). International institutions not only help regulate interstate business but also provide legitimacy and governing norms. The legalization of world politics has become increasingly pronounced in the Asian territorial order (Kahler, 2000).

The final point is the consideration of Japan and South Korea as a pair of mature democracies. The democratic-peace thesis (Brown et al., 1996) in international relations argues that liberal democracies are more likely to settle disputes peacefully. In liberal democracies, domestic interest groups keep the government in check in order to prevent the government from adopting costly territorial policies. Nondemocracies are more likely to engage in diversionary actions to shore up their popularity, as illustrated in Argentina’s occupation of the Falklands in 1982. Liberal democracies are likely to have an affinity for international legal processes because of their domestic judicial procedures and their constitutional constraints (Dixon, 1994; Huth and Allee, 2003; Kacowicz, 1994; Raymond, 1994; Simmons, 1999).

For all these reasons, the Dokdo issue seems to have a far better chance at a peaceful resolution at the present time than ever before. There are reasons to believe, however, that the existing equilibrium in favor of careful issue management and political lip service for domestic audiences are unlikely to be replaced by a new equilibrium moving toward genuine efforts to seek resolution. The optimistic perspectives discount the lasting effect of the default conditions produced in the process of ending the Pacific War, while inflating the positive effect of international institutions and democratic political systems.

Why the Dokdo issue is built to last

The Dokdo issue was off to a bad start. The ambiguity in the San Francisco Peace Treaty concerning the sovereignty of the islands would have been reduced had the governments of Japan and South Korea succeeded in agreeing on basic facts and principles to help foster better bilateral relations. However, when they signed the 1965 diplomatic normalization treaty and the fishery accord, both countries failed to produce an agreement or a formula that would have placed the territorial issue on a constructive platform.

This state of affair draws sharp contrast to the diplomatic normalization between China and Japan that produced Deng Xiaoping’s “1978 formula,” by which both countries agreed to shelve their sovereign claims over the Senkaku Islands and leave the controversy to future generations. It is also different from the dispute between Japan and Russia over the four islands (Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan, and the Habomais) that arrived at a number of agreements, such as the 1956 Gromyko–Matsumoto Joint Declaration and the 1992 Tokyo Declaration. During the 1998 summit at Kawana, Tokyo proposed to Moscow that the conclusion of a peace treaty and the territorial dispute be made through a “multi-phased scheme.” The core of this proposal was the stipulation that if Russia agreed to sign a treaty establishing a border north of the four islands under dispute, Japan would recognize Russia’s temporary administrative rights over the islands.

The fact that the Korea–Japan normalization treaty was negotiated and signed under the military authoritarian leadership of Park Chung Hee reinforced the impression among Koreans that the sovereignty of Dokdo was severely compromised for the sake of a speedy negotiation with Japan. The continuing national division between the two Koreas will further complicate the issue as well because during South Korea’s diplomatic negotiations with Japan to settle the Dokdo issue, Pyongyang may attempt to challenge the political authority and legitimacy of South Korea and further complicate the legal status of Dokdo as agreed by both North Korea and Japan. There remains a long and tortuous path for Japan and North Korea to normalize their diplomatic relations and to leave the colonial past behind them. Japan, for one, has been insistent that North Korea should be absolutely truthful about the issue of Japanese abductions. In response, North Korea has demanded Japan’s apology and compensation for all the atrocities committed during the colonial period. The stalemate between Japan and North Korea leaves the Dokdo issue more vulnerable to claims that Korea’s territorial integrity was neither duly represented nor wholly defended.

Furthermore, the controversy over Dokdo is not strictly bilateral between Japan and South Korea, since Japan is involved in other island disputes with China and Russia. Any change in the status of Dokdo would have a substantial impact on the disputes concerning the Senkakus between China and Japan and over the Kuril Islands between Russia and Japan, and vice versa. For instance, Japan’s claims over four of the Kuril Islands in October 1996 have led to a series of bold policies concerning Dokdo. The first attempt to link the Kurils with Dokdo appeared when Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) included the “restoration” of Japan’s control over Dokdo as one of its main election platforms. In the section entitled “Toward the Peaceful Resolution of Territorial Questions,” the LDP argued that the islands had always belonged to Japan, and the party urged the government to communicate this position to South Korea at every opportunity. The LDP subsequently issued a policy directive to the Foreign Ministry discouraging any “special treatments” of South Korea with regard to territorial issues (Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1996a, 1996b).

On 15 July 2008, Japan’s Ministry of Education published the new teaching guidelines that made indirect reference to Dokdo as Japanese territory. The relevant passage reads, “It is necessary to deepen the understanding of our nation’s territory in a way that includes the Kuril Islands by referring to the fact that there exist differing claims between our country and Korea over Takeshima.” ¹ Tokyo has also been highly sensitive to any sign of economic investment and permanent settlement in the four Kuril Islands and Dokdo. It has long protested the Korean government’s installation of a local police station, construction of a wharf, and establishment of residential registrations for the inhabitants, calling the activities “absolute incursions” that aim to convert the two larger islets into “inhabited” islands in order to more strongly justify Seoul’s sovereign claims. ²

Japan is involved in island disputes with South Korea over Dokdo, with China and Taiwan over the Senkakus, and with Russia over the Kurils. Japan’s positions in regard to all three disputes have been inconsistent, severely undermining its ability to devise acceptable proposals to South Korea and the two other disputing countries. For instance, Japan denies the existence of a territorial dispute over the Senkakus because it exercises de facto control over the islands. In contrast, Japan rejects the same claim by Russia and South Korea that there are any territorial disputes to be negotiated with Japan with regards to the four Kuril Islands and Dokdo.

Moreover, Tokyo’s strategies for the Dokdo issue contradict its strategies for the Senkaku Islands. It serves Tokyo’s interests if Dokdo receives more international attention. Diplomatic feuds and controversies ensuing between Japan and South Korea will help reinforce Japan’s claims that a dispute between the two countries actually exists. On 14 April 2006, Japan’s Maritime Security Agency announced a plan to conduct scientific exploration near Dokdo. The South Korean government responded by mobilizing 18 maritime patrol boats near the islands. The National Assembly passed a resolution calling for a ban of hydrographic exploration within Korea’s EEZ. The crisis was averted only when South Korea agreed to postpone its application to change the name of the Sea of Japan, submitted to the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), in exchange for Japan’s agreement to call off its hydrographic exploration (Tamai, 2006).

On the contrary, Japan has been keeping the territorial controversy over the Senkakus as obscure and low-key as possible, since Japan is effectively in control over the islands. On 7 September 2010, Japan’s Maritime Agency deviated from its usual policy to block and confine Chinese fishing boats close to the Senkakus’ shore; Japan also arrested Zhan Qixiong, the captain of a Chinese trawler that collided with Japanese patrol vessels (Fackler and Johnson, 2010). Subsequently, however, the Tokyo government abandoned its previous position to bring charges against him in domestic Japanese court and released him. Initially, Tokyo had intended to demonstrate its control of the islands but quickly backed down in the face of a flurry of diplomatic assaults from Beijing, including the suspension of minister-level talks, a refusal to export of rare earths vital to Japan’s automobile and electronics industries, detention of four Japanese construction workers in Hebei, and a slowdown of Chinese tourists to Japan (Yonhap News Agency, 2010). All these measures affirmed Tokyo’s concern to avoid drawing excessive attention to the Senkakus issue.

Third, there is no guarantee that international institutions can help produce effective resolutions of maritime disputes. Asian countries have recently been resorting more frequently than ever before to international conventions and laws as a primary means for settling territorial disputes. For instance, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Japan, and South Korea ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Furthermore, Asian countries have recently agreed to territorial arbitration and adjudication by a supranational body. Malaysia and Singapore, for instance, agreed to delegate the disposal of their conflict over Pulau Batu Puteh/Pedra Branca to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On 23 May 2008, the ICJ ruled in favor of Singapore, acknowledging Pedra Branca as its sovereign territory. Indonesia and Malaysia also had their long dispute over Sipadan and Ligitan settled by the ICJ, which in 2002 awarded the islands to Malaysia on the ground of “effective occupation.” In November 2002, China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in order to reduce conflicts among the claimants of the Spratly Islands. China’s decision to be included in this agreement reversed its previous policy that had aimed to physically reinforce its territorial claims by seizing the Mischief Reef in 1995.

These are important developments. At the same time, with regard to the Dokdo issue, there are signs that Japan and South Korea will continue to view international institutions primarily from selective and strategic perspectives. Such an attitude was displayed in negotiations over the EEZ demarcation and the revision of the 1965 bilateral fishery accord in conformity with the 1982 UNCLOS, which went into effect November 1994. As signatories, both countries were obligated to determine their respective 200 nm EEZs and negotiate over the demarcation of overlapping EEZs (Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for the Law of the Sea, 1986), with the original Republic of Korea (ROK)-Japanese fishery accord scheduled to expire in 1997.

Rather than encouraging both governments to thoroughly examine and settle the controversy surrounding the sovereign status of Dokdo with the new international maritime laws, the 1982 UNCLOS escalated the Dokdo issue from mild discord to a series of outright diplomatic confrontations. In 1996, the Hashimoto government of Japan began to unilaterally enforce the straight baseline and coastal-nation principles of the new UNCLOS by seizing Korean fishing boats, and pressured South Korea to immediately revise the bilateral fishery accord by sidestepping the territorial questions. The escalation of tension stopped only with the signing of a new fishery accord in 1998, which left the common water zones around the islands defined as PMZ (joong-gan-soo-yok in Korean). ³

In the case of Dokdo, some of the principles and regulations stipulated in the 1982 UNCLOS are subject to diverse interpretations. Article 11 of the UNCLOS stipulates that disputes must be resolved by peaceful and coordinated diplomatic efforts. In the case that the EEZs overlap, Article 74 paragraph 1 stipulates that states reach an “equitable solution”; Article 74 paragraph 3 proposes that in case of prolonged state-to-state negotiations on EEZ delimitation, states adopt a provisional memorandum until a final agreement can be reached. In addition, UNCLOS does not have adjudicating authority between sovereign states, since it does not provide obligatory mechanisms in EEZ demarcation and territorial disputes.

The biggest obstacle for Japan and South Korea to equitably demarcate their overlapping EEZ near Dokdo was lodged in the question of whether Dokdo can be defined as a baseline for Korea’s EEZ. Article 121 paragraph 3 of the UNCLOS stipulates, “Rocks that cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no EEZ or continental shelf.” Had both governments strictly adhered to Article 121 paragraph 3 during their negotiations, the Oki Island would have been the farthest Japanese EEZ baseline and Ulleungdo the farthest Korean EEZ baseline in the Sea of Japan/East Sea. In such a case, Korean sovereign claims over Dokdo would have been indirectly substantiated, since under the equidistance principle, Dokdo would fall within the Korean EEZ. The distance from Oki (the Japanese baseline island) to Dokdo is 80 nm, while that from Ulleungdo (the Korean baseline island) to Dokdo is only 40 nm. In the end, both sides agreed to revise the bilateral fishery accord by delimiting the overlapping EEZs around Dokdo at 131° 40′ and 135° 30′ East. Both sides also avoided the use of an official territorial name to designate the disputed islands (either Dokdo or Takeshima) in the text of the revised fishery accord, marking the zone only by coordinates.

The South Korean government has not announced an official position as to whether Dokdo qualifies as an island or a rock. Instead, it has carefully carried out policies that enhance the image of the territory so that it may potentially be regarded as an island, drawing on such concepts as “self-sustaining human habitation” and “independent economic life.” These could change depending on technological and scientific advances. Japan has also continued its own similar effort to protect Okinotorishima, a tiny islet in the Pacific.

The fourth and last reason for expecting the current deadlock over the possession of Dokdo to persist is rooted in the democratic institutions of Japan and South Korea. According to Mansfield and Snyder (2002), when a transition to democracy overlaps with the rise of nationalism, state elites not only maintain their conventional positions on territorial issues but also insist on them with aggressive policies. Democracy is a blessing for keeping the Dokdo issue from escalating into an armed conflict. Ironically, its quasi-permanent status is also a curse. Political institutions in Japan and South Korea are molded in ways that undercut the state elites’ ability to look for creative proposals for a meaningful resolution of the Dokdo issue. Democratic governance of Japan and South Korea increases audience-costs in territorial policymaking and thereby makes the issue more, not less, difficult to resolve. Competitive political environments keep state elites highly vulnerable to accusations made by political rivals.

Goldstein (1997–1998) suggests that competitors for leadership in the regime transitions would “adopt aggressive foreign policies that garner popular support by tapping into nationalist sentiments and elites support by placating the institutional remnants of authoritarian rule, especially the military.” He also points out that the rise of nationalism among the younger generation in China “raises concerns about its potential role if political participation does expand,” especially when the military is likely to continue to be a significant political player in any transitional Chinese regime (Goldstein, 1997–1998: 66). Such dual pressure from the public and the military makes it difficult for the state elites in “a future democratizing China to compromise in disputes with other states” (Goldstein, 1997–1998: 68). If state elites in China cope with this dual pressure by hardening the country’s position toward Japan over the Senkakus, such a development is likely to have a negative, rather than positive, effect on Japan’s attitude toward South Korea over Dokdo.

Given the fragile nature of Japan’s coalition government and the combination of a single-term presidency and decentralized National Assembly in Korea, domestic policies in both countries are determined by emotional nationalism and local interests rather than by national interests. Loose coalition politics dominate the parliamentary system of Japan, and the fragile nature of coalition politics deprives a prime minister of creative options to depart from old policies, as illustrated by Japan’s insistence on the simultaneous return of all four Kuril islands to Japan during Prime Minister Taro Aso’s meetings with the heads of the Russian government—with President Dmitry Medvedev on 18 February 2010 and with the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in March 2009. ⁴

Even when new external conditions arose, leaders did not have enough political capital to seize the moment and generate increasing returns to press on beyond their tenure. In the first decade of the post–Cold War period, there was a long series of frequent leadership changes. Among the first five prime ministers in the post–Cold War period, the three prime ministers from the LDP—Sosuke Uno (June–August 1989), Toshiki Kaifu (August 1989–February 1991) and Kiichi Miyazawa (November 1991–August 1993)—were either from minor factions within the party or hampered by public distrust. The power position of the other two non-LDP Prime Ministers, Morihiro Hosokawa (August 1993–April 1994) and Tomiichi Murayama (June 1994–January 1996) was also fragile because they led divisive and loose coalition cabinets. The sudden collapse of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi (July 1998–April 2000) also undercut the process toward a new partnership that he envisioned with the South Korean President Kim Dae Jung.

Loose coalition government in Japan has also been apt to fall prey to local politicians’ attempts to enforce Japan’s sovereign claims. In 1991 and 1996, for instance, members of an ultra-conservative organization landed on the Senkakus, an event that triggered a diplomatic confrontation with China. Similar incidents recurred periodically. On 11 December 2010, to protest the release of the Chinese captain, two members of a local assembly from the Okinawa district landed on the Senkakus. As for the Dokdo issue, the Shimane Prefecture Assembly passed in 2006 an ordinance designating 22 February as Takeshima Day. When the Japanese government received protests from China and South Korea regarding these actions, the central government cited its lack of capability to control local governments’ actions and citizens’ freedom of speech within the context of a liberal democracy.

On the contrary, South Korea’s 5-year single-term presidency produces a lame-duck syndrome; furthermore, its parliamentary election system is designed to make lawmakers favor local interests over national interests. South Korea is about 1/97 the size of the United States, about the size of the state of Indiana. The National Assembly of South Korea is a unicameral system, composed of 299 lawmakers who are elected every 4 years.

Because of these institutional settings, democracy per se does not prevent leaders from resorting to conventional interpretations of the Dokdo issue, thus further politicizing the dispute by utilizing a nationalist domestic platform. It was President Kim Dae Jung who pioneered a forward-looking Japanese policy. With Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, President Kim signed the Declaration of the Japan–Korea Partnership in 1998 and proceeded to proclaim that South Korea would not seek an apology from Japan for its past wrongs but would work with Japan to bring an end to the unfortunate past by the end of the twentieth century (Fukada, 2008). However, Kim’s forward-looking policy was reversed by President Roh Moo-hyun, who succeeded Kim in the 2002 democratic presidential election (Choi, 2005). During his tenure, Roh explicitly criticized Japan’s lack of introspection and atonement, describing Japan’s demand to take the Dokdo issue to the ICJ as tantamount to “justifying its history of crimes committed during the war.” He responded to Japan’s claims as a direct challenge to Korea’s national security and territorial integrity. ⁵

Regardless of the differences in political ideology and orientation, Korean politicians ritually compete to demonstrate their love for the islands, tapping into nationalist populism in response to so-called Japanese provocations. ⁶ In 2006, immediately after the Shimane Prefecture’s Takeshima Day ordinance was passed, 77 lawmakers in South Korea submitted a bipartisan resolution to the National Assembly demanding that the Japanese government repeal the ordinance. When the Board of Geographic Naming (BGN) of the United States, in July 2008, briefly changed the official name of Dokdo to Liancourt Rocks, an undesignated sovereignty, the leading members of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) attacked the Kim Dae Jung government for leaving the sovereign status of Dokdo ambiguous in the 1998 revised fishery accord (Yonhap News Agency, 2006b). ⁷

The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Japan’s formal annexation of Korea, and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) provided hope for a breakthrough in the Dokdo issue. President Lee Myung-bak’s call for a pragmatic foreign policy and the idea of an East Asian Community appeared to provide both countries with an impetus to place the Dokdo issue within a new context, a step closer to reconciliation between the two countries (Shin et al., 2007: 11). However, the Lee Myung-bak government was hit hard by a series of controversies in 2008 and abandoned its pragmatic Japan policy. In 2008, the regime barely survived massive protests over beef imports from the United States and subsequently suffered from Japanese history textbook controversies. As a result, the Lee government retreated from its previous enthusiasm and failed to show any serious interest in taking advantage of the centennial of Japan’s formal annexation of Korea. His message to the Korean people on National Liberation Day (15 August) in 2010 focused on building a harmonious and just society but made no explicit and groundbreaking proposals concerning Japan. Even though, on 10 August 2010, Prime Minister Naoto Kan apologized for Japan’s colonization of Korea, the statement avoided acknowledging the country’s legal responsibility for the atrocities inflicted, such as forced labor and sexual slavery, on the Korean people

Conclusion

Lowell Dittmer (2004) once observed that, as far as East Asia is concerned, “the end of the Cold War has confounded rational expectations” (p. 335). The confusion about festering regional dynamics is largely due to the false belief that the unsettled historical issues could be easily resolved. Foreign relations in contemporary East Asia suggest quite the contrary. The unresolved past and uncertainty about the future are fueling each other. Economic and cultural ties that pull countries closer, while political coordination and partnership remain largely disconnected. Even worse, economic and cultural exchange may politicize nationalism as politicians become increasingly susceptible to changes in the external environment (Rozman and Lee, 2006: 762–767). At present, one country’s effort to redress its own history and assert territorial integrity has a greater direct impact on another country’s own historical understanding and sense of national identity than ever before. Ethnic and national identity may intensify as the existing collective identity is threatened (Shin, 2006: 204–221).

In East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, the editors cautiously concluded that “historical issues will not be raised again [under Fukuda] in a provocative manner” and that the political leadership in South Korea “would find little reason to alienate Japan on historical issues, unless provoked by the Japanese side” (Hasegawa and Togo, 2008: 238). This article concludes that contrary to this forecast, the baseline conditions in domestic politics and international security of Japan and South Korea make these countries view historical issues in a provocative manner, thus each side alienating the other. The path dependency from the past and domestic political institutions that persistently deprive political autonomy from top decision makers in Japan and South Korea prevent both countries from moving beyond the 1965 formula in addressing the issue. The Dokdo dispute is the product of a broken historical momentum. Resolving the issue would require a critical rupture in order to transform the current baseline conditions.